"Grinding as challenge reminds me of scheming to avoid work". What does that even mean? If anything, grinding requires discipline, forgoing advancement in the game, so that your characters will dominate later.

Wizardry 8 is a great game, which is why us older gamers are still hanging around talking about it. However, it does have its flaws: Being crushed by inanimate objects, the Umpani obstacle course, the holes in the map, etc. Nobody should play IronMan with these stipulations.

At least this game is more forgiving, as it allows you to cast Chameleon; Enemies then may either not notice you, or, at the very least, it gives you more time to re-position your party for the inevitable fight looming.

My Wizardry/Divinity Bishop has to make the sacrifice of about 1/4 of her mana, just so that she can cast the essential buffs (arranged by order of realms): Missile Shield, Armorplate, X-Ray, Enchanted Blade, Magic Screen.

I played the original FF1 on an emulator (before Nintendo cracked down on ROMs), and I did grind all party members to level 50, and had to suffer with buying 99 Healing Potions, one at a time.

You might want to try the PSX version (Final Fantasy Origins); it has an Easy mode where you can level up to level 99; it takes twice as much XP as it does to reach 50 on Normal. A level 99 Monk is *really* powerful; unnecessarily powerful, in fact. (6000+ damage to the final boss who has "only" 4000 HP in that version.)

Or you could try maxing everyone's stats and skills in Final Fantasy 2, though I should warn you that the game isn't meant to be played that way, not to mention the nasty trap where heavy armor is worse than useless.

#RestInDungeon Likewise, encumbrance/item slots. Problems can be solved, and often already have been. "But, but the public demands!" Yes, the height of creation is status quo, as we all know. "Nah, profits above all else!" Yes, yes it's a business, but I'd rather not enable decline, thank you very much. There are already enough people doing such.

Yes, and? Also, when does one even need to buy ninety-nine at once?

If I was going to do repetitive or menial tasks, I'd rather being doing something productive like brick-laying or weeding, not playing vidya. It's like that gamer motivations thingamajig: "some players prefer attaining power through strategic optimization rather than grinding." Still more, some prefer to lower power levels. Low-level challenges are fun for a reason. Let alone speedruns and itemless runs. However, it is important to see that understanding power-builds and optimization makes it easier to build weaker parties, and makes finding the perfect mix of challenge and ease of play significantly more likely. Or, to put it simply, one should think like a munchkin, not play like one. (SIC SEMPER story-oriented gamers.)


I wouldn't go so far with regards to heavy armor. FFII is one of those games wherein evasion is superior to deflection, but there is little reason not to slap the best armor on Leon, at least in the Famicom release. (In this case vastly superior.) See also Age of Decadence and Legend of Grimrock. Dungeon Rats and Grimrock II mix things up.

Actually, it is interesting that one can build characters that can, often, tank in Grimrock II. The game is more fun when it's glass cannons versus glass cannons, like Wolfenstein 3-D, however. On the other hand, why not both? And here I am making the fighter class my caster!

Resting in Dungeons is what I consider to be a low attrition mechanic. When you can easily recover your resources between fights, the game can expect you to use all your resources in every battle, a decision that has significant consequences on the game design. Although, at this point, why not just restore everyone's HP/MP after each battle at this point?

For high attrition, in my experience a game really only needs to limit slots containing consumables or charged items; having tons of non-consumables can't break balance the same way.
For the Marsh Cave, Earth Cave, and Ice Cave, you're going to need a lot of them. Thing is, these are long dungeons, can be quite dangerous, your healing magic is rather limited (even with a white mage), and you don't have any free healing yet. This is also an issue if you do the volcano in the intended order, before you get the airship or get that rat's tail.
Or there's some players, like myself, who like to optimize "grinding" (I really dislike that particular term). The idea is to find a way to get to those high levels of power faster. Depending on the game, often the idea is to try to progress faster in order to get to the XP-rich areas sooner.

This is the sort of thing that draws me into such games as Disgaea 1 and 2 (before the series moved to consoles with DRM-infested online stores), and more recently, incremental games.

(Incidentally, in my current Saviors of Sapphire Wings playthrough, I'm actually going without a tank, as a bit of a challenge. No Paladin at all. There's only one boss (in the post-game) that gave me trouble, and I did eventually manage to win. Well, and the story boss I fought early, but using some defensive spells on the first round actually worked there.)

Actually, for FF2 I would go so far in regards to heavy armor, and would advise against it even on Leon, unless you can reach 99% evade while wearing heavy armor. The effects of evasion are not minor in that game.
* With high defense and low evade, there's a certain encounter in the final dungeon that's likely to wipe out the entire party without anybody being able to act, or at least give you multiple deaths before you can do anything. (And forget about running; I don't remember if the encounter is runnable, but if it is, the chance is based on your evade %.)
* With high evade and low defense, it's quite feasible to win the encounter before the enemies even get a turn.

And in Saviors of Sapphire Wings, until recently (when I've been starting to increase VIT), my party has often felt like a glass cannon. (The final boss died in 2 rounds, but not without killing 2 of my characters, one of whom was the main character.) Thing is, I don't really like the play style of using a tank to soak or negate all the damage; if not going glass cannon, I much prefer a play style focused around support and healing spells.

In W8, I have to face "attrition", due to magic depleting, and having to find a place to rest, to restore mana. Note that in the Monastery, there is no reliable vendor to sell Mana Stones or Magic Nectar yet, so your best friend is save and reload. Once you get to high levels (12+), the game does whatever it wants, giving you high and low level spawns, and everything in between (you can farm Magic Nectar from slimes, but I find that unnecessary).

Did it ever occur to you, that some of us like to be powerful? That *is* the point of playing an RPG, to dominate once you've suffered enough grinding to handle anything. Some of us grow attached to our characters, and don't want deaths.

Or, from what I understand, farm some Mana Stones from the demons near the end of Wizardry 7. There's your Mana Stones as early as the monastery (assuming you start there, rather than in Umpani or T'Rang territory).

I think that, if you want to get powerful quickly, you need to venture out of the starting area and travel to areas with greater risk and reward.

Also, when deaths aren't permanent and have no lasting consequences, there's no reason to lose attachment to a character if that character dies.

(Speaking of deaths, I was fighting an ordinary boss in the Saviors of Sapphire Wings postgame. In the first round, the boss cast Grand Cross, instantly killing 4 of my characters, then immediately (boss gets 2 actions per turn) casts Grand Cross again, instantly killing the other 2.)

Have you played incremental games? In those games, you can get powerful, for some definition of "powerful". (It's especially nice when you finally get to break some constraint you've been working under for pretty much the entire game.)

I've seen bigger numbers in incremental games than in any other genre, and that's an extreme understatement. (By big, I'm referring to numbers so big that, not only is a double precision float not enough (caps at 1.8e308), but even a Python integer or JavaScript BigInt isn't able to handle numbers that big.)

By level 25 or 30, the middle game should be a joke, you should be able to handle most encounters without a problem, especially MDPs, who don't need to rely on ammo. For later encounters, like the Southeast Temple, you should at least be level 30, if not pushing 35, so that no character deaths occur. By level 31+, you have the best spawn potential from chests, and should be able to handle the Mountain Wilderness no problem.

By level 25, you should be in the endgame, which will not be a joke at that point (though, if you're playing an MDP at that level, you can ahve some fun with all the nukes you have at that point, blasting away large enemy parties without having to get close).

No, you really just need to be in the mid teens for that battle. Element/Soul Shield will block most of the deaths, and any that do get through can be easily dealt with if you have enough full casters (and, at level 18, which is still not too unreasonably high, even hybrids).

The SE Temple battle should be taken on at the level that your casters can safely cast level 7 spells at least at power level 6 (due to the small fizzle chance with casting at PL7).

No, you don't need to be that high. You don't even need to be capable of casting level 7 spells to win that fight without too much trouble.

See, I just run from most of the monsters in FFI. Conserve resources. I wish running would be as effective in more RPGs—alas. (Also, beefy warriors.)

Ambush rate is tied to Firion, and turn order is per character, so... what's your point again?

Healing is turtling.™ Compromise: the healer is the tank—heh. Honestly the remarks about tanks made me remember some holy trinity forum wars. I am of the support not healer camp. I don't want tank bots that can't tear down the side of a barn either. If tanks and healers are also damage dealers, what's the dd's job? Ah, there's a reason the trinity is mostly a bane to game design. Worse yet is all the MMOs that strongly encourage the user to play as a dd for twenty-plus hours before being allowed to play something different. There's already the problem of the vast majority of players preferring damage, why make it worse?

Power isn't the point of RPGs. There's a better argument for the point being simulated murder, but it's more nuanced than that. But, let it be said, that the best of cRPG is a goodly mix of exploration, puzzle, strategy, and simulation. Or that thing Conan didn't say. I certainly like smaller numbers.

The temple is pretty easy, especially if one cheeses it, which is pretty easy, but also a tautological statement. Well, it can be nice to cheese it if trying to do it at very low levels, especially on expert. I'd do that If I wanted to clear the area at a low level, but I'm going to do two retros first, so we shall see. I don't even think I want any gear there, heh.

The monsters don't stop coming. Eh, at least all of my characters, save the alchemists, made it to thirty or higher book skill. Everyone is level nine, and the two divinity casters and the wizard have two attacks. Well, we'll get through Arnika Road again, the foes are much easier to fell at this point. We were also able to pick up a hayai bo, another awl pike, and some spells. Everyone has light now, except the Samurai and Monk. The latter will never get it, because I'm not going to multi-class here. Locks & traps is almost forty now. Almost everyone has a weapon skill of fifty or higher. I'm not sure what else to say.

Being able to easily run from all (or even most) encounters with little to no cost has no place in a high-attrition RPG like Final Fantasy 1. There needs to be some cost/risk to doing so, like having to eat a round of attacks even if you're successful. (With that said, the cost shouldn't be as high as in original FF3, where attempting to run away makes your whole party defenseless to the point where what would otherwise be harmless enemies can kill someone if you dare try to run away.)

(Another thought I have is that a high-attrition RPG needs problem enemies. The majority of encounters might not need too many resources to deal with (unless you're in a particularly challenging area), but there should be some enemies that you really want to kill (or escape from) quickly or else bad things might happen. In FF1, I'd count those Sorcerers (Mind flayers in remake translations) in that category, as well as any other enemy that can instant kill, as well as enemies that can paralyze with their normal attack.)

From the standpoint of a high-attrition game, the situation with tanking/support versus healing looks something like this:
* Healing is going to require a resource. How much of the resource depends on the healing ability, but as a rule it makes sense for even weak healing to cost something.
* The most efficient healing spell might not be the most powerful; sometimes, a weak healing spell is best if you're healing outside of combat. You can have a strong healing spell be more efficient; this encourages the player to wait until HP is low before healing, creating more risk (at the cost of conserving resources).
* Typically, healing is best saved for after combat, as there's also the cost of a turn when you do heal during combat. The turn cost is a rather important factor here, as turns are often the most important resource in turn-based games. One can throw this on its head by making healing spells more efficient during combat (FF9 does this, for example); at this point, one may then want to get their healing done in safer encounters. You see some of this with free healing effects (like FF1's Heal Staff/Helmet), but I'd be careful before putting such things in a game that's supposed to be high attrition.
* Tanking and defensive support aims to reduce the damage received. If balanced properly, than either this will save more resources (in terms of healing that ends up being no longer necessary), or it will make a problem enemy manageable (for example, by mitigating enemy spike damage down to a more manageable amount, or making your party immune to that one nasty attack the enemy has). Otherwise, the spell ends up being just for boss fights (or useless if it doesn't work in boss fights).
* Giving a healer some powerful damage spells creates an interesting situation. Do you blast the enemies with your attack spells to kill them quickly (a reasonable choice if you're facing a problem enemy), or do you save your MP for healing? If you use that powerful attack spell all the time, you're going to run out before dungeon's end, and won't have enough MP to heal if you need to. (And if you're poisoned and have no Cure Poison spells/items left, then you're in trouble; *that* is one scary situation.)

Wait, there are MMOs that do this?

I'd argue that, when you start putting puzzles into an RPG, the game starts being less of a pure RPG and more of am advemture/RPG or puzzle/RPG hybrid, depending on the nature of the puzzles.

(Case in point: I don't know if you're familiar with Lufia 2, but that game is very clearly a puzzle/RPG hybrid.)

Also, many simulation elements either, depending on how they're balance, either:
* Don't add anything other than busywork to the game.
* Turn the game into a hybrid of some sort.

For example, the need to eat food. In some games where this mechanic is found (Ultima 3+, Dungeon Master), it's just a minor annoyance (although Ultima 7's need to manually feed your characters is particularly obnoxious, especially when you factor in the game's atrocious inventory system). On the other hand, if you make food scarce, to the point where finding food is a major aspect of the game's challenge, then you now have a survival RPG rather than a pure RPG, and that single decision can drastically change the feel of the game.